Sharing Secrets
by pagerunner
Summary: Anders hasn't told Hawke a few things about being a Warden. Now that she's finding out, what does it mean for the two of them - and what does it mean about her brother's fate? Legacy fic, set after an interlude you'll encounter with Anders in the party.


They had to pause on the way to finding Corypheus, had to do so despite the lack of time, for the air was bad and the mood was ill and everyone, somehow, had to catch their breath.

Hawke walked closely beside Anders, watching him all the while. Justice's telltale glow still sparked at the corners of his eyes, but it was fading. In its wake, Anders looked tired. He had a determined set to his jaw, as if he _knew_ he had to get through this, but his skin looked gray and every few steps his feet would stutter or his fingers twitch, and he'd murmur like he was still hearing something - and wanting, despite himself, to reply.

Carver, a few steps ahead of them, kept giving Hawke significant looks. She wouldn't answer them. She knew.

"If he attacks us like that again," Carver had said a few moments before, his voice low and hard, "we _are_ going to have to kill him." She hadn't replied then, either, because she'd heard the tiny, almost imperceptible break in his words. Carver - her Grey Warden brother - was nervous, too, watching his future unfold before him in Anders' face. That was what was coming. The Calling.

The Calling, about which she hadn't been told.

It was cold down here: cold and humid, the air clammy on her skin. She shivered as she helped Anders take a seat on a nearby stone. "We should keep going," he said, but Hawke shushed him, told him they had to regather their strength, and he stopped arguing.

She thought for a minute about what to say.

"I know it's difficult for you, facing all this," she said at last. "I'm sorry."

Anders made a small, noncommittal noise. Hawke knelt beside him. The others had come to a stop, too, but were maintaining a respectful distance. Still, Hawke kept her voice quiet when she said, "You know, you've told me more about the Wardens in the last several hours than you have the whole time I've known you." She helped straighten his robes - just fussing, really - and then let her hands lie upon the feathered pauldrons, close to center. "I never knew."

Anders sighed. "You can forget, so long away. And… these things _are_ secrets. Technically."

She wanted to ask _Even from me?_, even though she knew the hurt was misplaced. It wasn't like she hadn't guessed some of it. After months sharing a bed…. his intermittent nightmares, screaming of demons and darkspawn and dreadful things, were impossible to miss. But even those he'd repress: he'd wake come morning and look tired and bruised but say nothing of it, as if he'd forgotten, or was trying to. She'd mostly felt too hesitant to ask.

But it did sound as if there was a bigger reason behind this silence than she'd known.

"You mean these things are critical to the Wardens," she said. Anders nodded, rubbing the bridge of his nose as if his head still pained him.

"We can't speak of the taint or the rituals, or people would never trust us. I don't even know all the details, but it _is_ blood magic of a sort; even I couldn't avoid that - and you'd have madmen for kingdoms around trying to exploit the technique. Think of what a blood mage might be able to do with it. Thank the Maker you didn't bring Merrill with us."

Hawke's lip twitched, for she still didn't think Merrill was as bad as Anders claimed, but she didn't interrupt.

"There are legends and rumors about the Wardens, of course, but they have to stay as that." There was the slightest otherworldly resonance to his voice now, as if Justice agreed. "The Wardens need to stay separate as they are. What I've told you, here… about the Joining, the Calling, all of it… it can't be shared. I can't let it happen."

"It's strange," she said faintly. "I've heard you so passionate before, but not over this… after leaving the Wardens like you did, I didn't think it mattered so much to you."

The surety deflated. His eyes looked distant, strangely silvered in the odd cavern light. Hawke thought of Larius and what the corruption had done to him, and shuddered. "I trust you," Anders whispered. "I will always trust you. But this… is bigger than me."

Centuries of history, of Blights and Archdemons and the smaller, personal, and yet somehow even more horrific tragedies of darkspawn intruding on a loved one's mind, devouring it from the inside out…. Hawke bowed her head. "It's just that there's all of this, and you never….."

When she raised her head again, Anders' eyes were terribly sad. He had, like Hawke, just glanced at Carver.

"How long?" she asked. Her voice almost stayed steady.

"It takes you slowly," he said after a minute. "You don't really notice for a long while. I mean, you notice like _anything_ at the start, when the taint first takes you, but then… it's just sort of there. You get used to it. I've been a Warden a decade now, give or take, and most days I don't think of it much. This is the worst it's ever been, now that we're dealing with something so powerful. I mean, you saw me when… well, the last time we were in the Deep Roads. It wasn't like… this."

"No," Hawke said thinly, watching her brother. Carver was cleaning their weapons and making ready for the final leg of their journey. He looked so strong, she thought. So determined not to let anything get the better of him.

"Carver's got a good long while yet," Anders said quietly. "He'll live a full life. Even I've got a couple decades left in me, supposedly, assuming something else doesn't get me first. A rampaging ogre, say. Or the Knight Commander." He paused. "Same difference, really."

Hawke tried to smile. "Don't let her hear you say that, or you'll have less time than you think."

Anders' answering smile was wry. "We _always_ have less time than we think, even if it goes for years. But it'll be all right."

She took his hands in hers. Twenty more years together, if they lived through all this. It seemed like a long time - and then again, not at all. She wished she'd known. Then again, what would have she done if she _had_ known?

_Carver's accepted it, as much as he ever accepts anything,_ she told herself. _Otherwise you'd be hearing a whole lot more about it. It may be hard for him to face right now, in the thick of everything, but he'll get through it. And Anders…._

Hawke looked at her lover, stroked her thumbs over his skin and slowly marshaled her thoughts. Into the silence, Anders said, "I should have told you more, and I'm sorry. You've given me so much. I owed you that, at least." He breathed in deep. "Just… there may still be things I can't tell you. Not without endangering the entire order."

Including her brother, Hawke thought. And dozens of other young men like him. She said, "I do understand now, I think. And you don't need to apologize."

"I sometimes think the whole _world_ needs to apologize to you, love," Anders said. "Grant me this little corner of it, at least."

She chuckled softly. "Fine, then, o official apologizer of the Deep Roads."

"What a title," he murmured, and leaned close.

The kiss was an apology, too, in its way: soft and intense and searching, his hands coming up to cup her face and hold her close like it was a reassurance and a question all at once. Hawke leaned into it and gave it her all. He made a small and broken little sound into her mouth, but he didn't stop, not until it had turned passionate enough that her whole body trembled and a melting sort of feeling claimed her. They were both breathing hard by the time they remembered where they were and made themselves stop.

For a few seconds neither of them dared move or say much of anything. When Hawke did, she darted another glance at her brother - for another, far more embarrassed reason than before. Fortunately, he'd rather pointedly turned his back and was making a studied attempt at ignoring the display. Even Larius had attempted to avert his eyes in discretion, although he gave a few curious peeks. Varric, on the other hand, wasn't avoiding them at all. He was smirking.

"You know," Hawke said, still holding on to Anders, "if you're so worried about stories getting out that shouldn't be told… you really, _really_ shouldn't have let me bring Varric along."

"Why do you think I just kissed you like that?" Anders murmured back. "Now he won't be able to talk of anything else."

Hawke elbowed him, hard. Anders let out an _oof_, then a laugh - weary and ragged around the edges, but it was there. It was then that she helped haul him to his feet.

"I think I've just come up with a new chapter for my epic saga," Varric commented as they drew closer. Hawke took her staff in hand, partially to suggest the threat of thwacking him if he said anything _too_ obnoxious. "A tale of love, trauma and redemption set against the grim backdrop of the endless Deep Roads, featuring the tragically tortured mage and his voluptuous-"

"Can we _please_," Carver said loudly, still not facing any of them, "move _on?_"

"As if you've never seen worse," Hawke said archly. "Remember the time you walked in on me in Thom Pearce's barn?"

Carver groaned. Varric arched his eyebrows and said, "Now this I have _got_ to hear."

Anders for a second looked the tiniest bit jealous, but that only proved he'd come back to himself, especially when Hawke winked at him and he startled upright - and then a look of warm gratitude crossed his face. "Save it for when we get back to the surface," she said, knowing that would only make Varric more curious. "We've got darkspawn to kill. Together."

Anders answered by threading his arm through hers. This time, he wasn't leaning on her out of weariness; he was holding on out of affection. The glow within her, which hadn't really faded since the kiss, brightened.

_Twenty years, if something else doesn't get us first,_ Hawke thought. _Twenty years. I'll… just have to make sure we get as much of that as we possibly can._

"Come on," she whispered. And with that they walked onward, for at least a while uncaring of the dark voices calling them, and whatever fates might await them beyond.


End file.
